


Do you believe in life after death?

by kpark



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Blasphemy, Elaboration on canon death, M/M, but since he did all i can do is take it one step further, i really wish sneaky the clown didnt do that, spoilers if youre not caught up to chapter 357, where do the bad guys go when its all said and done? find out on this episode of uvoshal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 02:29:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11980176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kpark/pseuds/kpark
Summary: Two murderers find each other in the afterlife, and wonder what it all means.





	Do you believe in life after death?

**Author's Note:**

> This is short, but not short enough to fit into the drabble pile. Nothing ever turns out the length I think it will be…

It happens fast, but not fast enough. 

A punch to the face, two, three, and his nose is broken, blood splattering and smearing across his face. A sharp slash tears down from his neck to his navel, and blood gushes from the wound, soaking his clothes within seconds. After that, he falls to the ground face down. Hisoka stands there watching him for a while, weighing his options. Shalnark feels like food on a platter. 

Hisoka decides he doesn’t want to play anymore, not with what’s left of Shalnark, but he can still have some fun. Shalnark can’t see what’s happening, but he hears the tearing of fabric and the brushing of fingers against his leg. Hisoka ripped fabric from his pants…? 

Hisoka bends over and picks up Shalnark without any grace or care for the mess. Shalnark is just a broken doll now. When Hisoka sets him down on a swingset and binds his wrists to the chains, Shalnark understands. He’s being put on display. 

Shalnark is still perfectly conscious, but his limbs are numb and he knows that if he attempts to fight back in this condition all he’ll get in return is a sickening giggle from his murderer. He’d rather not give him the satisfaction.

Shalnark receives a pat on his head, and Hisoka leans down in front of him to give him one last smile. “Goodbye〜♡.” 

He opens his mouth to respond, and Hisoka waits, presumably interested in hearing his final words. But no words come out when Shalnark tries, only a hoarse choking sound, followed by a wet cough. He hangs his head and blood pours out of his mouth. The most he can muster is a glare at Hisoka, but even that is a failure judging from the growing grin on Hisoka’s face and the condescending tut he gives.

Hisoka stands, turns on his heel, and saunters away. All Shalnark can do is watch.

When he’s all alone, that’s when Shalnark decides it didn’t happen fast enough. He wiggles his fingers, and from the corner of his eyes he can see them move, even if he can’t feel them. His lungs rattle with each breath and he’s intermittently exhaling blood, but he’s still breathing. _Well, this sucks._

Shalnark estimates he has roughly ten minutes before he dies of blood loss. Even if he were somehow able to reach his phone, help would never come in time. Even if someone were to stumble across him now and try to aid him, he wouldn’t be saved. All that’s left to do is to wait and think in these last torturous moments.

What could he have done differently? Was there any avoiding it? His fatal mistake was hesitating, catching Kortopi’s head. But does he regret that? Would he even have been able to ignore it, to let Kortopi fall to the ground and just run? No. He doesn’t regret it. Even if all it brought him was pain, at least he got to see the body. Besides, Hisoka was exponentially stronger and faster than Shalnark, he would have been caught and killed even if he ran. 

Blood drips from his nose and onto his legs, and he realizes he’s shaking. It’s getting harder to breathe now, and he can feel his pulse weakening. Probably only a few minutes left now. 

Shalnark tries to lift his head, and he can’t. So instead he just raises his eyes to look at the sky. It’s a pretty blue, with a few white clouds passing through here and there. Nice weather overall. A good view.

Really, he thinks, he’s pretty lucky. He got pretty far in life, accomplished a lot, met some people he liked. He’s not sure if he’s exactly proud of anything, and he certainly wasn’t a good person, but he had fun. 

The sky starts to fade to grey, all of his surroundings shifting to black and white. A vignette appears, darkness seeping in around the edges. It gets blurry as his pupils dilate. His chest barely rises with the last inhale, and his heart stops with the last exhale.

He falls asleep and wakes up at the same time.

He’s not sitting on the swing anymore. The sky isn’t blue or gray anymore either, nor is anything else. It’s all an endless pure white in every direction he looks.

Shalnark looks down at himself and sees his body just how it was before he was attacked, clothes and all. If anything, he’s a bit cleaner. He holds out his hands and sees not a speck of blood or dirt, touches his chest and face and feels everything smooth and in place.

“Hmmm,” he sings, and he’s relieved to hear his voice come out clear.

He can’t think of anything else to do, so he moves forward.

The ground is perfectly flat and white, and there’s no particularly visible horizon no matter where he turns. His shoes make a light patter on the floor, but he hears no other sound nor any trace of an echo. 

He walks on for what feels like a kilometer or two before he sees something in the distance. He walks closer and closer and sees that it’s a figure, a human one, a person sitting down. Their skin is dark against the white backdrop and they’re wearing a thin tank top. Their hair is long and tinted green.

When he gets close enough to see their face, he smiles, and says, “Y’know, hell is a lot less colorful than I imagined.”

Uvogin, who has been staring blankly at the ground, jumps in shock, his head whipping to the direction of the voice he just heard. “Wha… Shal?!”

In a fraction of a second Uvogin jumps to his feet and is barrelling towards Shalnark. He scoops him up in his arms, hugging him far more tight than is comfortable.

“Hey, hey, stop, that hurts!” Shalnark struggles against Uvogin to no avail. Uvogin just laughs uproariously and declares, “You’re fine, ya can’t die twice!!”

Uvogin puts a large hand on the back of Shalnark’s head, pulling him closer to press a kiss to his forehead. Finally his grip loosens enough for Shalnark to regain mobility, although he’s still held securely against Uvogin. Figuring he’s not going to be let down, he wraps his legs around Uvogin’s waist so he at least is in a more comfortable position. 

“Aah, I missed you, Shal…” The hand on the back of Shalnark’s head moves to his back, and Uvogin hangs his head to rest on his chest. “But I was kinda hopin’ I wouldn’t be seeing you anytime soon.”

Shalnark rolls his eyes. “Well, thanks. I could say the same for you.” 

Uvogin just sighs, and the half-smiles on their faces mirror each other and reflect melancholy. 

“Did they get you too?”

Shalnark almost asks what he means, but when he glances down and sees the look in Uvogin’s eyes, he understands. The chain bastard.

“No,” Shalnark says, shaking his head. “But you’d like the truth even less.” Shalnark has the gall to giggle at that, and Uvogin huffs.

“Then don’t tell me, I don’t wanna know.” It’s all over anyway, knowing won’t do any good. It’ll just serve to make the rest of his time more miserable, craving revenge and never being able to do a single thing about it. “I’ll tell you something though.”

Uvogin lifts his head for this, and locks eyes with Shalnark. “He got me fair and square. I wasn’t tricked, not really. We fought and I gave my all and they were stronger. That’s all there is to it. So you don’t have to worry about that.”

“Who said I was worried?” Shalnark scoffs, but Uvogin can see the change in his posture, the minute relaxing of his face.

Uvogin smirks. “Nobody needed to say it. Don’t tell me I know you better than you know yourself?”

Shalnark smiles, leans down to press their foreheads together. “Maybe.” 

Silence envelops them when neither is talking, and the space around them feels so incredibly empty.

Shalnark suddenly remembers something. “Hey… Where’s Paku?”

“Paku?” 

“She didn’t… You didn’t see her?” Shalnark isn’t sure what questions to ask. He doesn’t understand enough about where he is now, or what it really means.

“No.” Uvogin stares at Shalnark, searching for an answer he already has. “Her too…?”

“I guess that means Kortopi didn’t come this way, either.”

“Shit, Shal.” Uvogin’s arms loosen around Shalnark, and he slowly falls to the floor, landing softly on his feet.

Uvogin had always been more of a mourner than Shalnark, so Shalnark wonders for a second whether this really was the best way to do it. Either way, Shalnark would have had to say it. Maybe nothing makes a difference, at this point, considering their situation.

“Why only me?” Shalnark asks quietly, looking at his hands. Pakunoda died not long after Uvogin and Kortopi died just before him. So why are Uvogin and Shalnark the only ones standing here?

“I dunno.” Uvogin answers with a resigned tone, giving the impression that he knows where Shalnark is going. “But we have all the time in the universe to wonder.”

Shalnark touches the base of his neck where Hisoka cut him. It’s normal, just as it was ten minutes ago. Or fifteen. 

“How long has it been since I died?” Uvogin asks.

“Almost two years.”

“Oh…” Uvogin takes in the information as he sits back down on the ground. He chuckles to himself. “I can’t decide if that’s shorter or longer than what I thought. You can’t tell the time here at all, there isn’t a way to.”

“So you’ve been here the entire time?”

“Yup. Walked back and forth and left and right as far as fuckin’ possible, and it’s all exactly the same. There’s nothing here.” Uvogin sounds angry and defeated at the same time, like a loser begging for a rematch and getting thrown out by the refs. “You don’t get hungry or thirsty, which is good considering there’s no damn food. You never get older, your hair never grows or anything like that. There is _nothing_.”

“Except… you’re here now.” Uvogin looks up to him, smiles a smile that doesn’t really seem happy.

“So you’re saying not only am I trapped in a smooth white box for the rest of eternity, but I also have to put up with _you_?” Shalnark glowers at him with sarcastic disdain.

Uvogin’s sad smile melts to a grin, baring more teeth with the rumblings of a growl in his chest. A large arm darts out and snatches Shalnark’s wrist, yanking him with enough strength to dislocate an average man’s shoulder. Luckily, Uvogin and Shalnark have been with each other far too long not to know each other’s limits by pure muscle memory, and all that happens to Shalnark is a loss of balance. He falls onto Uvogin’s lap and is trapped yet again by an embrace.

“That’s right, you’re gonna have to live with it. Or, die with it.”

“Exist in sustained limbo with it.” Shalnark suggests.

“Yeah, exactly.” 

Shalnark sighs and relaxes his back against Uvogin’s chest. Maybe it’s not real. Maybe it’s all in his head right now, and this is just a manifestation of the last thing he wished for before he died. Maybe he’s not dead yet and his last moments are still happening, and he’s just caught in this strange make-believe world for the time being. 

Is this really hell? If Uvogin is right and telling the truth, then there’s nothing for them to do, nothing to be done to them. With Uvogin here by his side, it doesn’t feel like hell at all. But Uvogin was here alone for so long… 

“What do you make of it then? This place.” 

Uvogin tuts, looks thoughtfully upwards. “Well, I’ve had a little almost two years to consider it, and I think it’s something like purgatory.”

“Purgatory?”

“All I could do from the second I died until now was think about my life and all the things I’ve ever done. And as time keeps passing, the memories don’t start fading, they get clearer. Now you’re here, but nothing has really changed beyond that. We just get to sit and remember together.”

“Hm…” Shalnark takes Uvogin’s hand. Uvogin offers no resistance, allowing Shalnark to spread his fingers open and place his palm flat against Shalnark’s own. “Maybe it has something to do with repentance then. Regret.”

“I don’t have any regrets.” Uvogin says flatly.

“Me neither.” Shalnark shrugs.

“So?”

“We’re probably stuck here until that changes. Maybe Paku and Kortopi were more empathetic people than us, had an ounce of shame in death.”

“Yeah, probably. I’m guessing it won’t count if I just yell ‘I’m sorry!!’ into oblivion?”

Shalnark snickers. “Most likely not, but you can always try.”

“Nobunaga and Phinks probably won’t get caught here either when the time comes, they were always softies at the core.”

“Yeah, true. Nobunaga cried for you, you know.”

“Shit.” Uvogin tsks. “Well now you’ve given me one regret. Try some more.”

“Feitan drank all your beer. Like, seven hours after you died.”

“That fuck has no shame at all, they’ll be down here eventually and I’ll show them what happens when the dead are watching.”

Shalnark bursts out laughing at that. 

Uvogin closes his hand around Shalnark’s and rests his chin on his shoulder. “Maybe I should’ve read some of those old bibles that Chrollo kept around.”

“Maybe. But I still think that’s all a bunch of nonsense.”

Uvogin laughs, and says in a faux solemn voice, “You dare to blaspheme in purgatory?”

“I’m daring god to come smite us faster.”

“Such a daredevil!” 

“The key word is devil.” 

“Ho ho!! Clever, clever.”

“Hey, what if you’re wrong, though? What if this is the place where souls stay before they’re reincarnated?”

“Then they need to pick up the damn pace with the soul processing. I wanna be… a lion. Or a bear.”

“I think a hippo would fit you better.”

“Hey, is that an insult?” 

“I would never!” 

“Well now you’re just lying.”

Shalnark and Uvogin continue their banter as if it never stopped two years ago. They’d both met their ends, yet somehow it felt more like a restart.

On the other side of a border marked by darkness and blood, Chrollo sits on the floor of a ship churning in an endless ocean, and decides he still believes in souls.

**Author's Note:**

> Togashi giveth and Togashi taketh away.
> 
> I really think that Chrollo is gonna have another Requiem on the boat. We'll see...


End file.
